On the Feast of Pentecost (fifty days after the Passover), seven weeks after the resurrection of Jesus, the disciples were gathered in Jerusalem. They had been told by Jesus not to leave Jerusalem, but to wait for the gift his Father had promised, which they had heard him speak about: the baptism of the Holy Spirit. (Acts 1:4,5) As they were worshiping together they received this gift of the Holy Spirit in a spectacular fashion: through wind and tongues of fire that came to rest on each of them.

One result was that three thousand accepted the message of the Gospel, as proclaimed by Peter, and were baptized into the church. Since then we have celebrated this day as the birthday of the Christian church.

Genesis tells us in the creation story, that the difference between the first man and other primates, was the result of God breathing into his nostrils the breath of life. In this creation story of the church in Acts, God breathed his Spirit into those who believed in Christ. So today we celebrate the new birth, the new life of the Spirit, which marks the beginning of the family of the church of Jesus Christ. It is a day, for all who believe in Christ, to celebrate our life in the family of God.

Birthdays should be exciting times. They celebrate the gift of life. They should make us feel special. Friends and family remember us by sending cards, calling us, and sometimes even giving us parties and presents. As Christians we should feel special and appreciate the new life God has given us in Christ. This new life, this eternal life, is made possible by the gift of his Spirit. We must be careful not to take this gift for granted. Sometimes we are given gifts that we do not need. We wonder what to do with them. Why do we need the gift of the Holy Spirit?

We need the gift of the Holy Spirit to know the truth. Jesus calls the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of truth (John 14:17). Spirit means breath or wind. At Pentecost the Spirit came with a sound like the blowing of a violent wind. The life-giving breath of God blows our ship of life in the direction of the truth. Without it we are likely to be blown off course. There are many spirits in the world. We live in a universe of philosophies, and faiths which proliferate in our pluralistic and global society. Each vies for our attention. If we are not sure of our course, in what direction is the truth, we can be blown in the wrong direction. God is a God of truth. He does not want us to be blown here and there by every wind. St. Paul urges us to become mature in Christ so that “we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of men in their deceitful scheming.” (Ephesians 4:14) The danger is to be found at the mercy of the elements, i.e. of every and any opinion.

Let’s face it, every day we hear conflicting claims to be the truth. Is there any clear criteria by which we can distinguish truth from error? The Spirit is meant to guide us to the truth. (John 16:13) Where does it guide us? Jesus said that the Spirit of truth would speak about him. “When the Counselor comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the spirit of truth, who goes out from the Father, he will testify about me.” (John 15:26) Jesus revealed that he was the way, the truth, and the life (John 14:6). The point that Peter made on the day of Pentecost, was that Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead, was both Lord and Christ, who brought the forgiveness of sins and the gift of the Holy Spirit. He brought also the truth about God and about life. Jesus gives us the Spirit when we believe in him, (John 7:38,39). The Spirit also guides us to Jesus as the criterion of truth. The winds of the world can be tested for their veracity by whether or not they bring us closer to Jesus.

St. John writes, “Dear friends, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God.” (1 John 4:1-3)

Those who claim to possess the truth and yet reject Jesus as Savior are misled as to what constitutes the truth. Dostoevsky once wrote about his struggle to believe. He longed for faith and yet was a child of unfaith and skepticism.

And yet God gives me sometimes the moments of perfect peace; in such moments I have formulated my creed, wherein all is clear and holy to me. This creed is extremely simple; here it is: I believe that there is nothing lovelier, deeper, more sympathetic, more rational, more manly, and more perfect than the Savior: I say to myself with jealous love that not only is there no one else like him, but that there could be no one. I would even say more: If anyone could prove to me that Christ is outside the truth, and if the truth really did exclude Christ, I should prefer to stay with Christ and not with truth. (March 1854).

We believe that whatever may be the claims to proofs that Christ is not the truth, that they are spurious.

How does the Holy Spirit communicate this truth about Jesus to us today? In what form does the wind of the Spirit direct us? St. Peter tells us that the wind carried along the writers of the prophetic Scriptures so that they wrote down the inspired truth of God for our edification. (2 Peter 1:21) The gift of the Spirit of truth is wrapped up in the pages of the Holy Scriptures. God has given us all we need to know about Jesus in the pages of his written Word. We call this the sufficiency of Holy Scripture for our salvation. (2 Tim. 3:15,16)

Jesus said that the world cannot accept the Spirit of truth because it neither sees him nor knows him. (John 14:17). Those who do not share our faith suppress the truth about Jesus, and resist the Spirit’s direction. This is true for any kind of knowledge which a person may find uncongenial.

In April 26, 1986 the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in the Ukraine suffered a meltdown.. The Soviet system was still in power. When the nuclear reactor exploded sending a radioactive cloud all the way to Scandinavia, the Soviet government was silent. Under international pressure the Soviet authorities said that a nuclear meltdown did not happen, or it was not as bad as it was thought to be, or it had been solved. That was the extent of the information that was allowed to be disseminated to the citizens of the Soviet Union. They refused to admit the truth. In the same way a closed heart and mind and spirit can simply refuse to admit evidence of the reality of the Spirit of truth. The citizens of Jerusalem would only interpret the joy of the apostles, at their birthday party, as being drunk. They suppressed the possibility that God’s Spirit had come to fulfill prophecy. “The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned.” (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Dan Brown’s novel, The Da Vinci Code, made into a movie starring Tom Hanks, appealed to the search for an alternative to Jesus and his gift of the Spirit of truth. By attempting to discredit the Biblical Gospel it promoted a form of self-discovery, particularly discovery of gender-based aspects of ‘myself’, such as the sacred feminine. But the Spirit of truth directs us, away from an introspective search for our true feelings of personal identity (a never-ending black hole of egotism), to what God has done for us in Jesus.

This is why we, and the whole world, need this birthday gift. When Peter received this birthday gift he did not keep it to himself, but shared it with the Jerusalem crowd. He told them that this gift is “for you and your children and for all who are far off – for all whom the Lord our God will call.” (Acts 2:39) We, and the world, need the truth about ourselves, and God; the truth about life and salvation; the truth about love and grace; the truth about forgiveness and healing; the truth about this world, and the world to come. Welcome and receive this gift, and allow the Spirit to renew and refresh you with his presence. Share it with others.

The Ascension of Jesus is celebrated on the 40^th day after Easter Sunday (Acts 1:4). Because it is always a Thursday it tends to be overlooked and neglected. Yet the Ascension of Jesus is the culmination of his earthly life. It confirms his identity, and speaks to us of our destiny. Without the Ascension what would Jesus have done? Would he have hung around the disciples, appearing to them from time to time to instruct and guide them? Would he have gradually faded away, like a ghost? Would his presence among them have delayed the coming of the Holy Spirit? Would his frequent post-resurrection appearances have altered our understanding of our resurrection? Would they have fostered a belief in some sort of spiritual presence, an after-life on this earth rather than in heaven? What does the Ascension of Jesus have to say to us about our own future life?

The belief of the early church was that Jesus, at the end of forty days of teaching about the kingdom of God, was taken up to heaven before the very eyes of the disciples. A cloud hid him from their sight. “They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white, stood beside them. ‘Men of Galilee,’ they said, ‘why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.’” (Acts 1:10,11)

The resurrected human body of Jesus was taken up into heaven. This is significant. No longer would his body walk on this earth until his coming again. The bones of Jesus do not lie in a tomb, or anywhere else. He is resurrected from the dead and ascended into heaven. By doing this he completes his earthly mission. By completing the cycle of birth, death, resurrection and ascension, he pioneers our entry into heaven. What he did forty days after his resurrection, we are destined to do if we are in Christ. We follow him into the heavenly realms, where he is “in charge of running the universe, everything from galaxies to governments, no name and power exempt from his rule. And not just for the time being, but forever. He is in charge of it all, has the final word on everything.” (Ephesians 1:21-22 The Message)

The first Christians were so thrilled by this message that they wrote hymns about it. St. Paul includes one such early hymn, in his letter to Timothy.

“Beyond all question, the mystery of godliness is great:

He appeared in a body,

was vindicated by the Spirit,

was seen by angels,

was preached among the nations,

was believed on in the world,

was taken up in glory.” (1 Timothy 3:16)

The Gospel message is described as “the mystery of godliness”, i.e. a divine mystery that, instead of being hidden, has been revealed to us so that we do not have to be ignorant of God’s purpose. It is a revelation of ‘godliness’ i.e. of living in a reverent personal relationship with God, a recognition of our place in creation, a desire to live to our highest potential, in harmony with his plan for our lives. It is to live in reverence for God rather than in rebellion against God and his loving purpose for us. Such a life is aligned with our heavenly Father’s design for us. It is in contrast to the life that is opposed or indifferent or in rebellion to God’s purpose for us. Such a life, that does not want to acknowledge or reverence God, is called ungodly. It is hollow and self-destructive.

The Gospel message depends on these truths:

1. The eternal Son of God, existing as pure spirit before Time, was made visible in his earthly life, when he became a human being.

2. Christ’s profound claims were vindicated by his miracles, climaxing in his resurrection; these were sure evidences that he was the sinless Son of God.

3. During his earthly ministry angels watched over him, his birth and resurrection were witnessed by the heavenly host.

4. After his death and resurrection, his message was proclaimed to all races.

5. All different kinds of people responded by putting their faith in him.

6. Finally, he was exalted to the glorious presence of God in heaven. This was the climax of his earthly ministry.

This, if it is “beyond all question”, is “great”. The Christian Gospel is Christ-centered. It is the proclamation of the life, death, resurrection and ascension of the glorified Lord of all. What does this have to do with us?

Jesus ascended so that we too, might ascend with him. We are united with him, by grace through faith. We are part of his Body. If we are in him we can look forward to being taken up into glory. He pioneered the way for us. He took his human body into heaven so that we too, might be taken into the presence of God. This destination is called “glory”.

There is no greater anxiety than having to go on a journey to an unfamiliar destination, and having to endure discomfort on the way. Given our druthers we would all prefer to travel first class, at minimum personal inconvenience, to our favorite destination. When we face death we are aware of how little control we have over the process and the outcome. Just as we had no choice over the circumstances of our entry in this world, so we have no choice over the timing and manner of our exit. But we do have some control over how we prepare for the journey. We make decisions about our wardrobe, we pack our bags, and we purchase our tickets so that we are ready and not unprepared for our trip. Similarly we get ready for our final journey in this life by putting our affairs in order and learning what we can about our destiny. The Ascension of Jesus, the mystery of godliness, tells us that our destination is glory. We need not fear the end because it will be glorious. We are shown in the Ascension of Jesus that we will be taken into heaven, into the glorious presence of God. We will not be leaving anything worth clinging onto. Instead we will be entering into something wonderful. This life is not worth prolonging compared to what lies ahead of us. “No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him – but God has revealed it to us by his Spirit.” (1 Corinthians 2:9,10)

Recently I came across this quotation from Soren Kierkegaard:

“Man’s eternal dignity consists in the fact that he can have a history, the divine element in him consists in the fact that he himself, if he will, can impart to this history continuity, for this it acquires only when it is not the sum of all that has happened to me…. but is my own work, in such a way that even what has befallen me is by me transformed and translated from necessity to freedom.” (Either/Or 2:254-255)

We all have a history. It makes us different from animals and gives us an eternal dignity. We can self-consciously give to it some purpose and meaning as a result of our choices which led us from our origins to new possibilities to where we are today. In my eighty fifth year I am prompted to look back on my life and consider my history, from whence I have come to where I am today.

Winston Churchill wrote about his childhood: “When does one first begin to remember? When do the waving lights and shadows of dawning consciousness cast their print upon the mind of a child? My earliest memories are Ireland.” (A Roving Commission, 1)

Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, “My life began in a small semi-detached house in Sanderstead, part of the dormitory town of Croydon. This was in 1903, when there were still traces of its village past.” (Chronicles of Wasted Time, 23)

My life began in a small hotel in Hokitika, a county town of 3,000 souls serving a gold-mining, timber milling and farming community at the mouth of the river emptying into the Tasman Sea on the west. On the east the Southern Alps mountain range was snow-clad most of the year. My parents took over the hotel in 1935 from my maternal grandparents who bought it in 1922. My great-grandparents were pioneer settlers of the town in 1865 and owned several businesses. My earliest memories are of living in a three bedroom suite on the second floor of the hotel with my parents and my older sister, taking my meals in the dining room, spending time with the staff in the kitchen and their sitting room, feeding the chickens, and chopping kindling for the fireplaces. Being born in 1941 I remember the Second World War and participating in the parade that celebrated the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945. I was sent to kindergarten and then to primary school where I learned to read and write.

Next to the hotel were the railway lines and on the other side was the railway station reached by a pedestrian bridge. My bedroom looked out on the railroad yards where the train-trucks were loaded and unloaded with freight, sheep, or cattle. When the circus came to town I watched elephants, lions, tigers and other animals exiting their boxcars. On race days thoroughbred horses were led out of their booths. As my father was Vice-President of the Racing Club I spent some time at the race track where we would have tail gate picnics and watched the races. A relative had a harness horse, Grattan Bay, that ran trotting races where the jockey sat in a sulky behind it. As every town had its own racing club we would travel to each event during the year. The only reading my father did was the racing and sports pages of the newspapers. I never saw him read a book! He was an avid golfer and a member of the local lawn bowling club.

My father was also the Patron of the Excelsior Rugby Club for which he played in his early years. Photographs of the teams he played on adorned the walls of the public bar. I was expected to follow in his steps and played rugby all through school and eventually for that club after I graduated from university. Cass Square, where all the rugby matches were played was only a block away from our hotel. We would host visiting rugby teams at the hotel where they changed and showered after their matches at the facilities we had specially set aside for them.

My mother owned and ran the hotel. She was the business manager, kept the books, supervised the staff, ordered supplies, checked in guests, did the laundry and sent it out every week. I was given the jobs of ironing sheets and pillow cases on a rotary press, pumping oil for the water boiler, keeping kerosene heaters supplied, mopping floors, and cleaning bathrooms, as well as mowing the lawns. I was kept busy all the time. There was no home life as we lived our lives in public.

However I discovered comics, magazines and books. I would purchase all the boys’ magazines such as The Wizard, Beano, Rover and Eagle every week, and devoured all the Classics Illustrated Comics. After my mother put my light out every night I would read them under the bedclothes with a flashlight. I would regularly visit the local Carnegie Public Library and take out books by Frank Baum, John Galsworthy, Somerset Maugham, Dostoevsky, Enid Blyton, Baroness Orcsky, Agatha Christie and many others. I haunted my school library and became Head Librarian. I learned to love history and geography as well as English literature. One Christmas my parents gave me a ten volume set of The Children’s Encyclopedia by Arthur Mee which contained sections on Science, Biographies of famous men and women, interesting stories, world history, Art, Physiology, Horticulture, Countries of the world, Poetry, Electronics, Literature, Ideas, The Bible, and school lessons on reading, writing, mathematics, music and French. I still have them. They expanded my knowledge and gave me a thirst for more education. At school I found that I could not read the blackboard and began to wear eyeglasses which was a handicap when playing sports. Suffering from bronchitis and hayfever I was not as robust as I wanted to be and had to exert myself to prove my physical ability. No doubt that motivated me to become competitive and assertive. I excelled in track and held the school record for the quarter and half mile.

Ben Sasse, former senator from Nebraska 2015-23, in a speech accepting the Manhattan Institute’s Alexander Hamilton Award published in the Wall Street Journal, May 9, 2026 gives some starter habits for young people to cultivate. One is reading. Fewer than half of Americans read a book. Shorter attention spans are killing our imagination. Children need affection for books. We need to teach our kids to fall in love with reading and show them that the endless dialogue between ideas is more rewarding than the endless scrolling of social media. The second is hard work. This habit can start at an early age. Young men especially need work. Right now we are insulating our children from work, on average until they are in their mid-20s, and by then lots of them turn out not to be able to learn how to do it. I had the opportunity to read voraciously and to contribute to the family business through hard work. My early history introduced me to the tools that prepared me for a lifetime of productivity. I am thankful that God provided for me in those years. Our eternal dignity consists in the fact that we can have a history!

“Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and sickness among the people.” (Matthew 4:23)

As I reflect upon the ministry of Jesus, my own ministry and the ministry of the church and its pastors I see the balance of his example as a pattern for us today. Teaching, preaching the good news and healing every disease and sickness.

First, teaching. The pastor must be an educator. His subject is the Bible and its treasury of inspired knowledge. From Genesis to Revelation it is a library of truth about God and humanity. The pastor must give priority leading Bible Studies and classes to educate the congregation and make them wise about salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work. (2 Tim.3:16) Most people are ignorant or know little about the Scriptures and need to know what they contain. The Bible is the most important book in the world and needs to be studied by everyone not left on the shelf to gather dust. It is the manual for understanding the ways of God and man. It should be read daily as a love letter from God to nourish our spirit and to guide our lives.

Second, preaching. The pastor must be a preacher of the Gospel (good news of the kingdom). The pastor proclaims, heralds, and appeals for us to come to the Savior, Servant, King and Judge for redemption. “Preach the Word, be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage – with great patience and careful instruction. Do the work of an evangelist, discharge all the duties of your ministry.” (2 Tim.4:2,5) The pastor leads the congregation in worship through prayers that reverently edify and instruct. He applies the Gospel to their needs. He takes the doctrines of the Christian faith and shows how relevant they are to the human condition. He deals with the hunger of our hearts for meaning, for purpose, for love, for courage, for hope and for fulfillment.

Third, healing. The pastor must be a healer of every disease and sickness. This requires knowledge of the sickness of our world, our addictions, our idolatries, our self-inflicted wounds, our anger, our guilt, our co-dependencies, our relational conflicts, our disappointments, our despairs, our fears and anxieties. It requires discernment, compassion and the power of the Holy Spirit. This is more than any one person can handle so the pastor must be a person of prayer. Jesus is the healer and the pastor is the one who prays for healing. He deals with every disease and sickness in his preaching and teaching. He makes himself available to those who are harassed and helpless.

All these three aspects of ministry must be present if we are to follow the example of Jesus. May God give us the strength to do so.

“Why should anyone want to become a Christian? The reason will not be primarily intellectual. The most basic decisions we humans make about the direction of our lives are always rooted in what we care most deeply about. To become a Christian a person must care about eternal life.

But who does not care about eternal life? Wouldn’t everyone want to live forever? Perhaps at a superficial level. But Christianity conceives of eternal life not simply to be acquired beyond the grave; it is also a new quality of life to be acquired in the here and now. And few seem to want it most in this life.

What most people want most are temporal goods: houses, automobiles, membership in the club, prestigious jobs, power and sex. People who want these things most of all have difficulty getting too excited about eternal life. When they try to conceive of eternal life they naturally think of it as an endless extension of the kind of life they enjoy now. But such an endless extension can seen very distant and unreal and, to tell the truth, even boring. Many temporal activities take on a different character if we truly think of ourselves as carrying them on for eternity.

According to Kierkegaard, what is really attractive about eternal life, Christianly conceived, is that it will provide an endless opportunity to enjoy God as God has made himself known in Christ. This is only really attractive to those who love God, those who genuinely enjoy his company. These are the same people, of course, who abhor sin and who see the separation from God that is the result of sin as hell.

Now one might think that the task of the evangelist or ‘missionary to Christendom’ would be to make people desire to know God so that they would be more likely to turn to Christ, and that a knowledge of psychology would be helpful for this. This would be a mistake, however, since only God can truly induce a desire for himself. Still we are in the neighborhood of the truth at this point.

Only God can instill a desire for himself in a human being. Yet there is a sense in which God has already done this for everyone. He has placed a desire for eternity in the human heart. He has created us in such a way that we cannot find our ultimate happiness apart from himself. This deep truth makes it impossible to separate Kierkegaard the missionary, interested in helping people find God, from Kierkegaard the psychologist, interested in helping people become healthy and happy. It is true that most of us do not realize God has planted this deep desire within us, or at least we do not realize it clearly. It is also true that we have conflicting desires; God is the one we do not wish to know, and so our need for him is one we do not easily acknowledge.

Nevertheless, there are symptoms of our deepest need present in our lives. Here is where the psychologist can be helpful to the ‘spiritual physician.’ The psychologist can help us see these symptoms for what they truly are and thereby can help us move toward greater self-understanding.

This greater self-understanding does not necessarily or automatically lead to Christian faith. A person may see his need for God and self-consciously rebel against God. Self-understanding can lead to defiance as well as humble faith. But self-understanding at least makes faith a live possibility, If we understand that we are spiritual beings, intended for eternal life, then we have the option of seeking our true destinies or decisively rejecting our true selves.

Kierkegaard likes to put the matter like this: Christianity is the solution to the problem of human existence. Most of his contemporaries did not understand Christianity because they did not understand human existence profoundly enough. One cannot understand the solution without understanding the problem.”

(C. Stephen Evans, Soren Kierkegaard’s Christian Psychology)

“You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you.”

(St. Augustine, Confessions)

Through Jesus Christ the Christian receives the certainty of eternal life. Jesus Christ is the Savior from death, and faith in Him is already the beginning, the dawn of Eternal Life. Even Christians must die. But through Christ this death has lost its sting, for indeed the sting of death is sin, and this has been removed by Jesus Christ; it stands no longer between me and God. The power of this sting was the law; but the law has been removed by grace. Man’s relation to God is now no longer a legalistic one; but in faith man lives again on the generous love of God; the self-giving love which God Himself pours out upon us, out of His fullness. Hence the fear of death is removed.

‘This terrible death, which the Scripture calls the second death, is now taken away from believers by Christ, and is swallowed up in His life, and there is left behind a little death, indeed a sweet death, when a Christian dies according to the flesh. Such a death is sweeter and better than any life upon earth. For all the life, the good, the pleasures and joys of this world cannot make us so happy as to die with a good conscience, in in certain faith and comfort of eternal life.’ (Martin Luther)

‘O Death, where is thy sting? O Grave, where is thy victory? But thanks be to God which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (1 Cor.15:55)

‘Having the desire to depart and to be with Christ.’ (Phil.1:23)

Thus understood, death becomes the happy event, the stepping over the threshold which lies between this transitory suffering world, which is full of death, and that world of eternal life. It is not in virtue of something which is in the human soul, but in virtue of the Christ, in virtue of the divine saving act that man gains eternal life. There is a fight, and indeed a fight in which it is not the spirit of man who conquers, but God.

‘It was a wondrous battle,

When death and life did strive,

But life has been victorious,

It swallowed death alive.’

In any case, both for the believer and for the unbeliever, whether one knows it or not, recognizes it or not, death is the decisive sign of human life – either my own death, as the final stage, the sign of nothingness, or the death of Christ as the sign of positive fulfillment. Without faith man cannot come to terms with death. He cannot look it in the face. Either man must forget that he is any more than a beast, or he must forget that he is something other than a god, in order to be able to endure death. It is not merely difficult actually to die as man; but it is literally, in the exact sense of the word, impossible. There are human beings who die bravely, who refuse even in death to have any illusions. But they do not really ‘pull it off’; they all die in an illusion which makes death harmless. For the only possibility of not making death harmless, but of seeing it as it is, and yet of not going mad with terror, is faith in Him who in His death has revealed the whole horror of death, and at the same time the still greater glory and power of the divine love.

(Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt)

Daniel Jupp is a British author and political commentator with a Ph.D. from the University of Exeter. I admire his candor and his unflinching analysis of recent events in the UK and the world. In a recent column in his blog Jupplandia he explains his lack of Christian belief. I include it here because it expresses the view of many contemporary thinkers who consider themselves “struggling atheists”.

“I’m not a Catholic, and I’m only a cultural Christian. I’d say my position on faith is akin to that of Thomas Hardy or many of the British writers and thinkers who underwent the 19th century crisis of faith that started Britain’s journey towards a secularised spiritual emptiness (now rapidly being replaced by Islamic conquest).

I’m what might be classed as a struggling atheist. Intellectually, I find it very difficult to reconcile reality with the idea of a benevolent Creator. I don’t feel God’s presence, and never have. But I do feel God’s absence, and always have. It doesn’t seem to me that atheism, mine or anyone else’s, is an intellectual triumph. It seems to me to be a loss and a tragedy, both societally and for individuals who don’t have faith within themselves in a higher purpose and a spiritual dimension to our existence.

Hardy wrote an incredibly moving poem about this odd position to be in called God’s Funeral. He felt that God was dead, but not in the mocking or celebratory way that many since have used that phrase or considered it to be true. He felt it as the most all pervasive tragedy there is, the secret underlying all human suffering, and the cause of a sorrow less finite than God Himself. I expect any rational or thinking believer, certainly in the Christian tradition, knows that the struggle with doubt is integral to the profession of faith, but it’s a comnection less well known on the atheist side of the fence.

One of the great ironies of modern atheism, after all, is it’s strident, proselytising, hectoring certainty, a feature which seems to contradict its denial of faith by often being more of an insistent absolute than the thing it replaces.

I’m not that kind of atheist. I’m the kind that feels the absence as a wound, rather than declares it as a boast.

It seems to me that human beings must have meaning, and that meaning is as essential to our happiness as the things which we require for survival, and often more important to us than those necessities. And the world we live in now is proof of Chesterton’s assertion too:

“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”

The absence of Christian faith and of a Church active in the lives of a once Christian people does not usher in, it at least does not long suffer to exist, a society in which Nothing reigns and in which men and women happily go around with no firm beliefs on anything. Instead, it opens up a gaping Void which both physics and occultism would tell you will soon be filled. What rushes into the secular society that turns from Christ is a horde of new faiths and new beliefs, which rush across the spiritual landscape with all the chaos and harm of barbarian tribes breaching an undefended border.

The two things, physical conquest and spiritual conquest, are of course intimately linked, and together explain the way in which Islam is achieving what a muscular Christianity of the past held back for centuries.”

But the welcoming void of secularism and of Christian retreat and absence is also the thing which made the worst tyrannies of the 20th century possible, with Communism, Fascism and Nazism all offering the fierce intensity of meaning, no matter how evil they were, that Christianity no longer provided. Atheism, for all its conviction and smugness, is never sufficient. It is a thing defined solely by what it declares itself to NOT be, rather than by any offering of meaningful content which the soul of man (even in those saying no such soul exists) still craves. Humans will believe, come what may, in Something.

And the most absurd insanities, the most comically inept constructions, the most viciously stupid ideas, can be stitched together in a form with all the threads showing and not a hint of beauty to it, and this New Faith won’t be judged on how ugly it is or how ridiculous it is, or even by how murderous it is…..but on how much opportunity for belief it offers, and on how confidently and ruthlessly it strives for dominance.”

This observation reminds me of what Jesus said in Matthew 12:43-45 about the man who rejects one spiritual belief and then allows another to replace it. “The final condition of that man is worse than the first.” The absence of Christ in the heart of man is indeed a wound that needs healing. Only by acknowledging our need and Christ’s sufficiency to fill that need will the soul be healed. Let us pray for those we know who are struggling with this deficiency that they may come to know the loving presence of our Lord and Savior.

The Christian message of the reconciliation and redemption of mankind contains, as its negative presupposition, the doctrine that man, who has been created in the image of God, has set himself in opposition to his origin, and that it is this opposition which determines the contradiction in his nature, the conflict between his true nature and his actual, empirical nature. In the perception of this truth – which is only disclosed to those who believe in God’s Word through Jesus Christ – the Christian doctrine maintains that it is the only realistic doctrine of man, that is, the only one which is in touch with reality, the only one which understands and explains man aright.

The first thing the Bible tells us about Primal Sin is that it is the revolt of the creature against the Creator. Sin is defiance, arrogance, the desire to be equal with God, emancipation, a deliberate severance from the hand of God. This is the explanation of the nature of sin and its origin, not only in the story of the Fall (Genesis 3) but also in the parable of the wicked husbandmen – the stewards who wanted to make themselves masters (Matthew 21:33ff.), and in the parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11ff.). The Son who lives with the father goes to him with the request: “Father, give me my inheritance!’ He wants to be independent. André Gide extols this will to independence as the birth of human freedom and of man’s responsibility for his own life, he is speaking out of the depths of the modern mind, severed from God, which believes that an independent human existence can only be attained by being free from God. The fact that true freedom is the same as dependence on God, that man is only free when he is united with God, is an idea which lies outside the horizon of the emancipated autonomous reason.

And this is the very origin of sin: the assertion of human independence over against God, the declaration of the rights of man’s freedom as independent of God’s will, the constitution of the autonomous reason, morality and culture, where reason refuses any longer to apprehend, but wants to give and to have, where it no longer reflects upon existing truth, but desires to think things out for itself, to initiate, to create, to produce its own thoughts in its own way, a human self-initiated creation made by man in his own strength.

Man is a rebel against his divine destiny; he is the steward who pretends to be the master of the vineyard and then kills his lord’s messengers. He is the prodigal son who has demanded ‘the portion of the goods that falleth to him’ and now squanders it. Not only has he done all this in the past, but the revolution is still in full swing.

(Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, 1939)

As I read opinion commentators on the reasons for all the evil in the world and their considered solutions I come back to this insoluble problem that requires humanity to acknowledge our spiritual condition and unconditionally surrender to our Creator and Savior if we want to find peace, hope and love.

The book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible expresses the skepticism of a life that has seen most things, and finds it hard to make sense of it all. The more we know about life, the more cynical we can become. We may have more, rather than less, unanswered questions as we age. We may find that religious faith, and personal trust in others, is harder rather than easier to come by. A friend who had experienced a great deal of betrayal and disappointment by people whom he expected more of, shared with me that his wife had taken it “all rather badly as it stings and hurts, and she doesn’t trust anyone just now.” There are plenty of reasons to doubt that there is a good and loving God if we look for them. Some of us may want to have a stronger faith but the advice people may give us may become reasons to doubt.

Lynn Anderson in If I Really Believe, Why Do I Have These Doubts? lists several reasons to doubt, several blind alleys seekers are encouraged to explore that lead them nowhere but to frustration.

First, is the advice that faith requires you to turn off your mind, and to just try harder to believe. “Don’t think about it – just believe!” Wanting to believe, or wishful thinking. does not make it so. Trying to ignore troublesome doubts, and attempting to sweep them under the rug, will not work. We fool ourselves if we try to believe by being intellectually dishonest. Closing our eyes to problems will not make them go away. God made our minds so that we can interpret what is happening in life. We are created to think through our understanding of life. That is why we have a book like Ecclesiastes in the Bible. It is the journal of an intelligent seeker who is struggling with trying to make sense of the issues of life. His words ‘are like goads, his collected sayings like firmly embedded nails – given by one Shepherd’(12:11). They are meant to goad us to action in our search for answers. When difficulties arise in life, we cannot dismiss them as though they do not matter. We must think through their implications and find a resolution of them in our beliefs. To be a Christian is not to commit intellectual suicide as some people contend, even if some Christians behave that way.

John Stott wrote a little book entitled, Your Mind Matters,ⁱ in which he criticized “the misery and menace of mindless Christianity.” He argues why it is important that we use our minds. “Faith is not credulity. H.L. Mencken…once said that ‘faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable.’ But Mencken was wrong. Faith is not credulity. To be credulous is to be gullible, to be entirely uncritical, undiscerning and even unreasonable in one’s beliefs. But it is a great mistake to suppose that faith and reason are incompatible.”

The second reason to doubt is to assume that faith is like something you can catch. To this way of thinking all you have to do is to wait for faith to happen. It will be like waiting for lightning to strike, like it did Saul on the Damascus road. Parents who take this approach do not influence their children in any direction. They say that their children will make up their own minds when they grow up. Others say that the doubts their children experience will go away when they mature. I heard my aunt and uncle say that about their children. It was an excuse for them not going to church. As a result they deprived their children of the advantages of a childhood Christian education. They have had a hard time in adult life catching up.

More education or maturation does not necessarily bring faith. Faith is our response to revelation, and requires a choice on our part. Many people have reason to doubt because they believe that they have to do nothing and God has to do everything. God calls us to choose. “Choose you this day, whom you will serve.” Soren Kierkegaard calls the refusal to choose, to make a decision of faith, cowardice.

“Cowardice wants to prevent the step of making a decision. To accomplish this it takes to itself a host of glorious names. In the name of caution cowardice abhors any over-hastiness. It is against doing anything before the time is ripe…. In the end, failure to decide prevents one from doing what is good.”

The third reason to doubt is the attitude that faith requires definitive proof. To this way of thinking, conclusive proof in the form of rational arguments is essential to faith. Since such proof is lacking, faith is, what Mark Twain defined as, “believing what any fool knows ain’t so.” But no person can be forced to believe by logic. Faith does not come to a person by being argued into it. If this were so, the smarter people would be the first to believe, and the duller people the last. But the opposite may be true. Paul, who, despite doing a lot of arguing himself, quoted Isaiah 29:14

“ ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’ Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world.”

Intelligence levels have little to do with faith. You cannot reach a conclusion about faith in Christ based upon proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Faith requires a risk, a leap, or it would not be faith. It is a decision without complete proof and leaves a lot of questions unanswered. Faith is a leap based not on proof but trust in the evidence that is available. There is no life without this kind of trust. We decide what is worthy of our trust without requiring absolute proof. We trust ourselves to all sorts of people, machinery and organizations because we have enough evidence that they are worthy of our trust. We do not completely understand many things we trust every day, e.g. banks, automobiles, airplanes, telephones, computers. But because we have evidence that they work, we use them, act on them, put our trust in them. We are called to examine, not proofs for the existence of God, but evidence of a loving relationship with the personal God. Frederick Buechner writes,

“We all want to be certain, we all want proof, but the kind of proof that we tend to want – scientifically or philosophically demonstrable proof that would silence all doubts once and for all – would not, in the long run, I think, answer the fearful depths of our need at all. For what we need to know, of course, is not just that God exists, not just that beyond the steely brightness of the stars there is a cosmic intelligence of some kind to keep the whole show going, but that there is a God right here in the thick of our day-to-day lives who might not be writing messages about himself in the stars but who in one way or another is trying to get messages through our blindness as we move around here knee-deep in the fragrant muck and misery and marvel of the world. It is not objective proof of God’s existence that we want but, whether we use religious language for it or not, the experience of God’s presence. That is the miracle we are really after.” (The Magnificent Defeat)

The fourth reason to doubt is the belief that faith comes through miracles. If only we could see a miracle happening! Would we believe? Witnessing miracles does not automatically generate faith. Take the Pharisees for example. “Even after Jesus had done all these miraculous signs in their presence they still would not believe in him…..For this reason they could not believe.” Lynn Anderson comments on St. John’s conclusion:

“What an ominous statement. Notice that the unbelief of the people John was describing was a choice. Faith in Jesus would have threatened their vested interests. Consciously or unconsciously, they had chosen to set their hearts against Christ and had continued choosing not to believe in spite of miraculous proof over a long period of time. Finally, their hearts so hardened that even the miraculous signs of Jesus himself would not touch them! It is possible to reject faith so often that we can wind up actually dismantling our believing machinery. The mightiest signs and wonders cannot change our hearts! Only the Spirit of God can do that! Through the gospel, the Spirit of God can move us to choose faith. But even then, he will not force us – only touch us, convict us, call us on. How we respond is entirely up to us.”

If you ask people who do not believe in Christ, what it would take for them to believe they usually mention one of these reasons to doubt. They want a miracle, or conclusive proof, or they want to wait for divine intervention, or they or their peer group think that faith is anti-intellectual. These reasons, I believe, are ill-founded.

There are plenty of reasons to doubt. We can always find a reason to avoid believing in God and serving him. The choice is ours. But God sent his Son so that we might believe. We have to decide whether we are going to worship him or not. Examine the evidence, by all means. Faith can be commitment based on the evidence. Our mind is engaged. But at the end of the day you still have to take a leap of faith if you want to experience God’s presence. Invite the Spirit of God into your life so that you will know the reality of Christ.

What is Man? This question is the point at which the passionate interest of men and the divine message of the Bible meet and come into conflict. Primarily, man regards himself as the natural center of his life and of his world. Even when in theory he thinks that he has overcome this ‘naïve anthropocentrism,’ in practice, in life itself, he does not cease to assert himself as this center. A world with as many centers as there are human beings – that is the cause of all the chaos and disintegration in the world of men. The message of the Bible, therefore is this: God, not man, is the center; this truth must be expressed not only in theory but in practice. Hence this message is not concerned with ‘God in Himself,’ but with ‘God for us,’ the God who manifests His nature and His will in the Son of Man, in order that in man this center may once more become the true center. The great obstacle to this, however, is that view of himself held by man; to overcome this ‘misunderstanding’ of man about himself, to which he clings as a supreme good, is the revealed will of God, and the action which this resistance is overcome is faith. The understanding of man’s being is decided in faith or unbelief; in the fact, that is, whether God or man is the center.

Thus in itself the truth of faith involves discussion, the Gospel is essentially – not accidentally – controversial. It is an attack on man who is his own center. Divine truth wrestles with human falsehood, and man conceals himself behind his ‘self-knowledge’ in order to defend himself against the Divine claim. Hence a Christian doctrine on man must be beaten out on the anvil of continual argument with man’s own view of himself. If faith simply means that human thought and will finally capitulate to the truth and will of God, then theology can never be anything other than an attempt, in some way or another, to ‘transcribe’ this controversy between the Word of God and the thought of man.

(Emil Brunner, Man in Revolt, 1939)